"There's a little left," I said.

She perked up. "Let's paint our fingers and toes again, but without all the other girls."

"Okay. But first let's have a spit contest."

"Haven't we had enough contests today?" Huda complained, but quickly relented.

A spit-dangle contest. That's what we were doing when we were summoned.

"Your spit will go farther if you suck snot from your head." I demonstrated, making hacking sounds. "Just regular spit breaks off. That's how come you always lose this game."

"That's gross," Huda complained.

"Amaaaal! . . . Huuuuuudaaaaaaa!"

Baba was calling us home to the camp, where we all lived in the shade of international charity.

"Your father's calling." Huda stated the obvious, as was her annoying habit. "Why isn't he at work today?"

"I don't know. Let's go."

We ran. I turned it into a race, but I stopped before we reached the camp's first row of concrete shacks.

Something was happening. Too many people were on the streets.

Instinctively, Huda and I reached for each other's hand and we walked slowly toward the commotion. Anxious throngs were chanting in the streets and alleyways. In their embroidered Palestinian thobes, women hurried about, balancing baskets of provisions on their heads. Uncertainty shivered in the air. Some people were crying. Some displayed their joy with the trilling of zaghareet. Israel had just attacked Egypt. A loud radio announced, "The Arab armies are mobilizing to defend against Zionist aggression."

Baba came toward us and gathered Huda and me in his outstretched arms. "Habibti, something has happened. The two of you must go directly to the house." He was calm and serious. "Now go, girls," and we went.

At our house, men were waiting for my father, who had gone off to telephone my brother in Bethlehem, where Yousef worked.

Mama hurried toward us when she saw Huda and me approaching. She surprised me with a tight embrace and mumbled into the air, "Praise and thanks to You, Allah, for my child." Mama kissed me as she rarely did. If I could, I'd not have let her go. Her sudden display of affection made me grateful for Israel's attack.

"Allaho akbar!" someone shouted. "Soon we're going home to Palestine!"

With Mama's new warmth lingering, I was hopeful. I conjured all the places of the home that had been built up in my young mind, one tree, one rosebush, one story at a time. I thought of the water and sandy beaches of the Mediterranean-"The Bride of Palestine," Baba called it-which I had visited only in my dreams. A delicious anticipation bore visions of the old life, the one I had never known. My rightful life, disinherited but finally to be regained, in the back terrace of Jiddo Yehya's and Teta Basima's mansion, with its succulent grapes dangling from their vines, Mama's rose garden, the Arabian horses Ammo Darweesh raised, Baba's library, and our family's farm, which had sustained half the village.

I comforted Huda, who seemed frightened, with a reminder that we would have our own room once we returned, and money enough for dolls. In my naive confidence, I pointed to the disorganized and untrained men. "Just look at them," I told her, impressed with the would-be fighters who walked among us. "Just look . . ."

Baba had long been hiding rifles in a hole dug in the kitchen floor, under the sink. He was back now, talking to the men. I knew the time had come to use those weapons.

For years, I had heard Baba complain that King Hussein ibn Talal of Jordan was disarming the Palestinians, leaving us defenseless against Zionists who were amassing more and more weapons with the help of the West. So whenever he could get his hands on a weapon, Baba hid it in the hole in the kitchen floor. He had covered the hole with a sheet of tile and declared it off-limits to children. I dared not disobey.

That day I watched Baba open the secret hiding place and empty it of more than twenty rifles. He distributed the weapons to the fighters, whom I had until then only known as fathers, brothers, uncles, and husbands.

I stepped away. From afar, I fixed my eyes on the gentle soul who was my father as something fierce inside him forced its way to the surface. His face became hard and the smile that lived in Baba's eyes disappeared. He spoke to the men with an unfamiliar voice that bore no hint of the intellectual, solitary man who spent his time with books or in communion with the land. I had not the fortitude then, nor the capacity, to comprehend the urgent change in my father, or indeed that in the other adults- all of whom had already lived through one dreadful war and heartbreaking eviction.

"Amal." Mama grabbed my arm. "Don't wander off. You and Huda stay where I can find you."

A clap like thunder boomed in the distance. It made me jump and put greater urgency in Mama's voice. She looked at me with her bottomless black eyes, the ones I had inherited, and repeated the lesson she wanted me to learn most of all: "Be strong like I've taught you to be, no matter what happens."

My momentary conviction that better times were at hand sank into fear as Mama moved Huda and me, like game pieces, into a corner.

"Stay here and don't leave my sight," she ordered us.

None of the adults would tell us what was going on, so we pieced together snatches of their conversations as best we could.

The hurried tempo, long sighs, intense looks, and solidifying wills pushed Huda and me closer together, the two of us clinging to the wall, wide-eyed and confused. An announcement came that the women and children should stay put while the men were to hunker into defensive positions-"Until the Arab armies come," someone said. Huda and I locked arms. Fear crawled through our bodies and made our muscles twitch and contract involuntarily.

"I love you, Amal," Huda cried.

"Me too. You're my best friend, Huda."

"You're my best friend, too."

"We'll be safe. My baba has weapons and he'll protect us."

"Let's stay together."

"No matter what."

"Swear?"

"I swear by Allah."

We hugged to seal our promise.

The men waited for the enemy, but no enemy soldiers appeared.

Time after that ran as a continuous stream, unmarked by day or night. We could not see the enemy's face, but we heard them: airplanes, so many, flew close to the earth and dropped bombs. Mama hurried Huda and me into the hole in the kitchen, now devoid of firearms.

The hole was as deep as I was tall, and wide enough that Huda and I could crouch at its bottom. I looked up from that position and saw Mama's face, bottom-up. How strong her jaws looked that way. As she was closing us in, I caught sight of a brightly painted bowl on the kitchen counter, a Mother's Day craft I had made in kindergarten. I recalled how Mama's face had opened when I gave it to her, and how it had closed when I told her I wished I had a better mother to give it to; I was five then and I had just wanted to see if I could make her clench her teeth and bulge her jaw muscles.

The lid covered us in and the Mother's Day bowl disappeared on the other side. It was dark in that kitchen hole.

"Huda," I whispered, still holding on to her as tightly as she held on to me.

"Yes." She was trembling.

"I'm sorry I always yell at you." Huda had been my only true friend. Other girls had no tolerance for my endless competitions, which I had to win. I was bossy and rude. Now I thought I was going to die.

A long time passed before Mama suddenly pulled off the tile cover and handed us a baby. It was Khalto Sameeha's little girl, my three-month-old cousin, Aisha.

"Take Aisha. I'll be back soon," Mama said, her voice hoarse.

A month earlier, Khalto Sameeha had pierced the baby's ears, and Aisha was still wearing the darling little studs with blue stones that her father had chosen to repel the evil eye. We didn't know it yet, but Khalto Sameeha, her husband, and my six-year-old cousin Musa had not survived the attack. Only Aisha had. Wrapped in a blanket that Mama had knitted for her when she was born, Aisha lay alongside the road to the East Bank, not far from where her family lay dead on the ground. A woman hurrying from Jenin recognized the blanket and knew that Mama was still at the camp, having refused to flee with the others. She sent Aisha back to Mama with a young Jordanian soldier who was separated from his retreating battalion, which had been sent by the Hashemite Kingdom to defend against Israel's invasion.

Huda, Aisha, and I remained in the hole for what seemed like an eternity of ghostly quiet. Then Mama returned with a loaf of bread and milk for the baby. She was disheveled and dirty, her eyes darting side to side.

"Amal, Huda, are you okay?" Mama asked, reaching her arm inside to feel for us.

"Yes, Mama, but-"

"Stay put, girls. Jordan, Syria, and Iraq are fighting alongside Egypt. This will all be over soon. Everything will be all right."

"Mama, we have to poop and the baby has messed her diaper," I pleaded, but she was already gone.

Without words, Huda and I removed the diaper and buried it beneath our feet. We took turns relieving ourselves and covered the mess with dirt we scraped off the sides of the hole. Mama had left the tile cover slightly off for air and light to seep in, but the only air was a cloud of dust and no light came. We heard explosions and panic above, but we dared not remove the tiled cover or move at all.

Days passed, I think. The baby was inconsolable at times. Huda and I joined her, the two of us sobbing in terror with the child. The baby screamed until she could cry no more. We heard other screams. Beyond the tiled cover, children wailed uncomprehendingly. Women, as helpless as their children, cried and prayed loudly, as if trying to catch God's attention through the chaos. We heard destruction and blasts of fire. We heard chants. The odor of burning flesh, fermenting garbage, and scorched foliage mixed with the smell of our own excrement in the dust.

"Huda, I think this is Judgment Day. It's just like it says in the Quran."

"Oh God. Let's say the Shehadeh and pray for forgiveness."

"Ashhado an la ellaha ella Allah." We recited the words that would get us into heaven.

We cried. Our faces blackened and our bellies empty, we begged for God's mercy.

"Please forgive me, Lord, for splashing mud on Lamya's new dress. Forgive me for . . ." My prayers went on and mixed with Huda's.

"Please, Lord," Huda prayed, "forgive my father."

A loud explosion blew off the tile cover. Suddenly there was light and we were covered with dust and debris. My ears rang with the blast. I was screaming and crying, but I could not hear myself. The two of us were crouched over the baby, our arms covering our heads. I peeked at Huda and saw her suspended in mid-scream, a mute screech of absolute terror. Her hair was matted, white with dust and wet with blood, and her face was covered with filth. Blood dripped down her temple. My heart thrashed with such potency that I could hear it. Ba-boom, ba-boom Ba-boom, ba-boom. The blast closed my ears to all sounds except the rhythm of my heart's vigor and the gurgle of terror. It was a dense consuming silence, like the calm at the center of a hurricane or the hush of sound underwater.

I looked down at Aisha. She was sleeping. Her face was calm. Seraphic. Her sweet little rosy lips were slightly parted, almost in a smile. I did not understand. My tears landed on her face, streaking the filth on her cheek. Her abdomen was a gaping hole cradling a small piece of shrapnel. The whole world squeezed itself into my heartbeat as I took the bloodied metal in my hand. So small and light, how could it have cut her open like that? How could it have taken a life with such ease?

I rose to my feet still holding my dead baby cousin and the scrap of metal. The kitchen floor had been at the level of my eyes, but the kitchen was gone and I could see sky where the roof had been. Before me were heaps of rubble, some of it smoldering still. A man I recognized as our neighbor, Abu Sameeh, was digging frantically through a heap of rubble with his bloodied hands. He disappeared in a plume of smoke, then emerged with a small child in his arms and pierced my trance with a frightful howl of condensed irrevocability.

There, on the rubble where his refugee's shack had stood and where his family was buried alive, he stood on the threshold of an abyss and cried, his face deformed with agony and his voice charged with despair. Clutching his limp child in his arms, he arched his neck toward the heavens and released a hair-raising wail, a guttural surrender to his fate.

Abu Sameeh was a refugee who had started life over after 1948. That Israeli campaign had taken the lives of his father and four brothers. He had married in the refugee camp, raised children, and supported his two widowed sisters. Like the rest of us, he looked forward to the return, when we would all go home. But in the end, the original injustice came to him again and took his entire family once more. There could be no starting over a third time. Nothing more of life was left to live.

Children, some of whom I recognized, wandered aimlessly. Some were crying, some stared vacantly. I looked down and saw Huda still in the hole, stooped in a fetal position, rocking back and forth. She had stopped screaming, but I could hear her reciting the Fatiha, the first verse of the Holy Quran.

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to the God of the worlds, the Merciful, the Compassionate, Lord of the Day of Judgment. You do we worship and to You do we turn for help. Guide us to the true path, the path of those whom You have favored. Not those who have incurred Your wrath. Nor those who have strayed. Amen.

Then she'd start over. In the name of Allah, the Merciful In the name of Allah, the Merciful . . . . . .

I felt frozen, unable to lift my feet, as if they had been cemented. I turned my eyes, absorbing it all, and I saw Mama. She was sitting on the ground, her eyes distant and uninhabited. She seemed not to notice when soldiers pulled up in their trucks.

I ducked back into our hole, cowering under whatever I could pull over us for cover, shreds of corrugated metal and a mangled bicycle. I motioned to Huda with the "shhh" sign as our eyes bulged through a new fear.

I stood again, careful to peek without being seen. All I could see of the soldiers were their legs. They wore big boots that seemed to stomp my body as they walked about. They had bombed and burned, killed and maimed, plundered and looted. Now they had come to claim the land.

We ducked low in the hole when we heard shouts and conversations in a language we did not understand. Then, a single gunshot. When I dared to peek out again, I saw Abu Sameeh lying on the ground, a gun in his hand and his dead son in the other arm. The soldiers had shot him. He lay there, eyes wide, forever gazing, disbelieving. His life drained from his body onto the earth, and I watched from the kitchen hole as the pool of blood widened beneath him like a whisper of unsung endings.

Abu Sameeh had mustered what strength remained in him and tried to fire on the enemy he had been searching for but could not find. His gun failed, and the soldiers executed him. It was a merciful thing.

Huda and I remained where we were, too frightened to move. After the soldiers left, we dug a small shelf in the earth with our fingers and laid the baby there, in the wall of the hole in what had been our kitchen.

We fell asleep, wrapped around each other like twins in a womb, until a hand reached into the hole and woke us. Startled but weak, we looked up and saw a nun. She was yelling in broken Arabic: "Stretchers, quick! Two little girls! They're breathing. Over here!"

Dumb with fear and hunger, Huda and I tightened our bodies around each other in an unspoken demand, which the nun understood. We would not be separated!

Huda remained curled like a fetus as we were carried to a makeshift hospital set up by international relief agencies. I was prostrate, taking it all in, my teeth grinding the dirt that coated my mouth no matter how hard I labored to spit it out. That was when I saw the torn corpse of Huda's father pass in a wheelbarrow. She did not see him, as her eyes were shut.

Where is Baba? Please God please Please God please, I repeated endlessly, bring him to me now bring him to me now.

"We named you Amal with a long vowel because the short vowel means just one hope, one wish," my father had once said. "You're so much more than that. We put all of our hopes into you. Amal, with the long vowel, means hopes, dreams, lots of them." Only six years old then, I grew with the belief that I alone held my father's dreams, all of them.

I had just one wish now: to see Baba again.

The good nun-Sister Marianne, she called herself-walked next to us with Aisha covered in her arms. Before we got to the hospital tent we were by stopped a soldier-the first Israeli soldier I had ever seen up close. He was very tall. The sun screwed my eyes shut when I tried to see him all the way to the top of his helmet.

"You cannot take the child there," the soldier said in thick, broken Arabic.

"Why not?"

"Reporters."

"You're afraid the world might see what you do to children?"

"Shut up. I will shoot you here, if you like," he warned, raising his rifle, but also, strangely, smiling.

Unperturbed, she replied, "Do it. You are no different from Nazis who stood in my way when I cared for Jews in the Second World War." She narrowed her eyes around her recognition of his accent and spoke to him in a language they both knew. His eyes expanded with surprise, then he responded in the same language and finally nodded his head with permission for us to proceed.

"Take the girls to Station Three," Sister Marianne ordered the volunteer workers. As we passed the soldier, I looked up from the stretcher and glimpsed his eyes. Blue like the sky.

Huda and I were treated for minor cuts. She received a few stitches in her head. Probably the cut was from falling debris. I saw Mama in the treatment tent and rushed toward her, aching for another embrace. She sat motionless in a corner, just as I had seen her sitting on the ground when I had stood up in the kitchen hole. I stopped. Her spacious empty eyes did not see me standing before her. She seemed to see nothing.

"Mama." I touched her lightly, but she did not respond. I put my face in front of hers, but her eyes looked through me.